Frosted Flake

A solo winter drive up the Alaska Highway, featuring four lynx, four wolves, one Mercedes-Benz, and one colossal helping of liver and onions.

JOHN PHILLIPS

Feb 1, 2000

JOHN PHILLIPS

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JOHN PHILLIPS

"My first customer was a lunatic. My second had a death wish."

-Karl Benz

I might confess to the former, but I possess expensive mail-order documents that repudiate the latter. I awoke one frosty Monday in February, and by the time the caffeine had a grip, I had resolved to drive our long-term Mercedes-Benz ML430 (C/D, December 1999) to Anchorage. A kind of Alaskan hajj.

"Explain exactly why again," insisted editor Csere when I called 850 miles later, midblizzard, from South Dakota.

"To investigate the Iditarod," I said.

"Is that some kind of nasal infection?"

"Listen," I told him, "today in Minnesota, I saw a bumper sticker that said, 'Our governor can beat up your governor.' Plus another that read, 'Turn signal broken, watch for finger.'"

"Take all the time you need," said Csere. "Really."

Day 2: At the Wyoming border, an immense welcome sign says, "Like No Place, On Earth." The comma, I take it, denotes some sort of double-entendre, but an hour spent attempting to decode it led me nowhere. More sensible were two lawyers on the radio who were forming "a consciousness-raising group" called "Monicas with Attitude." From the same station I learned that a nightspot in Sheridan, Wyoming, was that night featuring a band called the Scarred Scrotums.

Today, I logged another 850 miles, but, in part because of self-serve credit-card pumps, I have spoken exactly seven words in 15 hours. My first four were "Big Mac and fries," then I concluded with this profound interrogatory: "Got a room?" Western cultural intercourse is now confined largely to discussions of hat sizes.

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Day 3: In Montana, I'm cruising at a steady 100 mph-though, embarrassingly, two kids in a Tercel are pacing me with minimal trouble-and I'm practicing the local pronunciation of the nearby city, Havre. (Say "HAV-ir." It rhymes with cadaver.) On the radio near Great Falls, the DJ says, "Montana will soon no longer be 'America's speedway,'"-he spits this out as a pejorative-"because the governor is expected to sign legislation stipulating a daytime limit." Another of America's sweet perks extinguished, like sit-down restaurants named Aunt Betty's that are in no way connected to gas-station convenience stores.

At Sweetgrass, the Canadian customs official interrogates me for 15 minutes. Not about the Benz's suspicious manufacturer's plates but about sport-ute purchases. "I got it down to two," he tells me, whether I want to listen or not. "Either I buy a Cherokee or an ML320. What do you think?"

"Well, one's an old design and costs $19,000, and the other's a brand-new design and costs $35,000."

"Really?" he asks. This information astonishes him.

It is worth noting that, just west of Lethbridge, Alberta, you can drive to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which, for my money, beats even the roadside attraction in Wall, South Dakota, called, "400 Pounds of Poisonous Reptiles NOT ASLEEP."

Concluding my third 850-mile day, I listen on the radio to a man who lived seven consecutive days in the West Edmonton Mall without ever leaving. "I might have become insane," he reveals. "I began to stalk priests."

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It occurs to me that I've been confined within a vehicle for three days, and, apart from wanting to dismember Dr. Laura with a 220-volt SaladShooter and a rusty entrenching tool, my faculties and our Benz are not only intact but also in cosmic repose.

Day 4: At first light, just west of Whitecourt, Alberta, I spy my first moose, which I initially identify as either a humpbacked cow or Linda Tripp but, in fact, turns out merely to be a plywood silhouette whose function is to startle drivers into last-second avoidance maneuvers in response to the many identical stationary cutouts dotting the landscape over the next 2000 miles.

I enter British Columbia amid a sea of lodgepole pines slathered in white frosting resembling Crisco. At the border, a sign warns, "Photo Radar in Use," which might actually curtail criminally inclined behavior if, in fact, there were any cars in use. Also, my snow-encrusted rear plate is opaque. My best thinking thus directs me to summon the ML430's top speed, snow tires humming like Bobby McFerrin unplugged.

At Dawson Creek, the official start of the 1500-mile Alaska Highway, a Shell clerk recognizes the Car and Driver logo and asks, "You from the magazine?"

"Yes, ma'am," I tell her.

"No, you're not," she replies. "Anyway, we're all out of those."

As I leave, I observe a bumper sticker on the back of an Esso tanker. It says, "Use your head for more than keeping your ears apart"-yet another slogan that would likely have been more effective than the particle-board moose.

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Prancing caribou entertain me just beyond Pink Mountain, which is fortunate because the radio now picks up no frequencies whatsoever. I dip into the six CDs I grabbed back in Ann Arbor: Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Annie Lennox, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, and Emmy Lou Harris. Six women. If I should freeze to death out here, would rescuers study this peculiar collection and possibly divine the proximate cause of my disaster?

At a tiny outpost near Fort Nelson, a 25-year-old man with ferret eyes and a goatee tells me: "Once a year, I see a dozen Porsches cold-weather-testing on the highway, but mostly I think they're just screwing around. When I ask how fast they're running, this German guy says, 'About 120.' I asked, 'Kilometers?' He said, 'I think your English expression is, "Oh, as if."' Wait till them guys center-punch a caribou at a buck-twenty. Talk about a pile o' Wiener schnitzel."

My next reliable shot at fuel is 300 miles distant, in Watson Lake. I'm encountering oncoming vehicles about every 30 minutes, and the road is as snow-and-ice-impacted as Sir Ernie Shackleton's huskies. What's more, a swirling mist is creating those hallucinatory hedge-shaped animals that attacked Shelley Duvall in The Shining. On the Alaska Highway, the consequences of an "off"-a car stuffed into a snowbank, particularly in the dark-are akin to teaching history to high-school Goths. Every few minutes, I shoot my right arm forward to uncramp it-I've seen Rusty Wallace do the same inside Winston Cup cars-then remind myself to relax my grip on the wheel. In fact, driving on this friction-free road is perfect preparation for an advanced Skip Barber course. My steering inputs are gentle and minuscule, shifting the Benz's mass as imperceptibly as possible. I'm squeezing the throttle and brake with such footsie sensuality that it's almost sexual. And where possible, I keep one set of wheels aligned in crunchy snow, because, just like sprint cars that accelerate hardest in the groove most recently doused by water, that's where the grip resides. At least that's the case with the 16-inch Bridgestone Winter Duelers that were mounted back in Ann Arbor.

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At Muncho Lake, four lynx lope casually across the road: three kits and an adult female the size of a goat. She leaves prints in the snow as large as my right hand. "Them's rare," says a local in Watson Lake. "You see a big link [that's the sub-Arctic singular of lynx], and he's usually eatin' roadkill. Skin him and hold him upright, he'll be as tall as a man."

For the fourth consecutive day, I drive 850 miles.

Day 5: I cross the Yukon River and am suddenly in Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon. One minute, no human beings-only moose droppings and Ford Excursion-size drifts -- then the next minute, several thousand dissolute celebrants of the Yukon Quest, a 1000-mile sled-dog race that has just concluded here. As I tour the town, I'm flagged down by two men in a Pontiac Firefly. "If you're from Car and Driver," they scream, "we're buying you lunch."

"Kinda in a hurry," I tell the driver, "but I'll give you free magazines."

"You got two options," comes the reply. "We buy you lunch or we take your car."

They lead me to what they insist is the best restaurant in Whitehorse, although it strikes me as somewhat unusual that just beyond the bar, writhing around a chrome pole, is a completely naked woman.

"See, that's gotta be a lotta ladies' worst nightmare," says one of my admirers. "Here she is in the Yukon, minus 40 degrees, and she's buck naked, surrounded by 100 lonely guys the color of fish, who like huskies better'n their wives."

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"You have any dependents?" I ask, hoping to change the subject.

"Just alcohol," he replies. "Well, plus two boys, but they're identical twins, so we only count 'em as one."

I have strength to drive only another 100 miles, where I stay in the Cozy Corner Motel in Haines Junction, whose backyard view of the white-capped Wrangell Mountains is so inspiring that I can't imagine why there's a TV in my room. When I turn it on, I have my answer: It features 12 channels of snow.

That night, for the first time in 4000 miles, I am treated to a sit-down home-cooked meal: liver, onions, boiled potatoes, a pint of ice cream, and coffee strong enough to defend ethnic Albanians. Price: $6.20, "but 50 cents extra if you want two strips of bacon," warns the cook. As I'm paying, a regular walks in. Her cheeks are redder than anything the minus-35-degree ambient air should have inflicted.

"Propane tank squirted me," she explains to the cook.

"It blow up?"

"Not yet, but probably in a minute or two," she says as she casually orders coffee. "My husband's messin' with it now."

Day 6: At dawn, the Benz's windshield cracks-emitting a report like a firecracker detonating in a metal trash bin-creating a lone symmetrical eyebrow from wiper to wiper. The Alaska Highway is notorious for peppering cars with buckshot gravel, so I was pleased we'd had the foresight to coat all of the Benz's leading painted surfaces with an adhesive film called Armourfend. It's similar to helicopter tape-and popular among racers-but far more transparent, and it more readily conforms to tricky compound curves. We applied several layers over the ML430's headlamp lenses, too, but the windshield was facing the elements unprotected and had predictably succumbed.

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At Slims River Bridge, on the flats bordering Kluane Lake, I spot a lone black wolf trotting nobly across the ice. Only a few miles north, at Destruction Bay, I spot another-an immature brownish-red female-who stares at me from an impenetrable willow thicket only 30 feet distant. Each click of my Nikon's shutter causes her ears to prick. Then there appear two more wolves-each at least four feet tall-strolling down the highway near Burwash Landing. Overcome with excitement, I begin tramping around in the hip-deep snow, inflicting untold damage on expensive lenses and missing a good shot of three caribou with antlers the size of microwave relay stations. I stumble around like this until I notice two curious phenomena: It has become dark, and my toes are as numb as lug nuts.

Because the likelihood of a hotel within the next 200 miles is slim, I sit on the Benz's rear bumper and cook a bag of freeze-dried beef stroganoff, knowing its pungent aroma will ensure that all nearby carnivores will flee at least five miles. Then, wearing every piece of outer wear I possess, I climb into the Benz's back seat and curl up in a summer-rated sleeping bag. Just to play it safe, I awaken every two hours, not so much to warm up the cockpit to, say, zero, but to ensure that the V-8 will snap to life at dawn.

It's not a bad night-full moon, minor Northern Lights, only one passing truck-though first light reveals on my face mask a veritable cascade of frozen condiments whose previous residence-stop reading here if you're squeamish-had been within my very own lungs.

Day 7: I drive straight past Fairbanks, straight past Skinny Dick's Halfway Inn (a bar sufficiently notorious that its souvenir baseball caps can fetch as much as $4.95), and into Nenana, Alaska, where the principal eatery is Moocher's Bar & Grill.

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A Moocher's patron, on learning I'd driven alone from Detroit, says: "One guy here lately -- looked like you, in fact -- drove off the road and done sat in his damn automobile for nine days. Hikers found him. Stiff as an ironing board but a lot less useful."

Nenana is the village famous for a wooden tripod erected annually on the frozen Tanana River. The locals then wager colossal sums on exactly which hour of which day the tripod will plunge through the ice. This riveting spectacle is accompanied by a fur-hat contest, snow wrestling, a bubble-gum-blowing contest, cat races, a beard contest, a beer-belly contest, and a banana-eating contest. After that, there is a meeting titled "Women & Men Soaring in Unity -- A family-oriented cross-cultural conference sharing perspectives on the equality of women and men."

"Probably gonna miss that last 'un," advises the Moocher's regular.

Day 8: In Nenana, I pick up professional sled-dog musher Bill Cotter. At his 80-dog kennel he demonstrates the fine art of cooking a late lunch in a 50-gallon steel drum. In go 25 pounds of salmon and lamb, 10 pounds of hamburger, 15 pounds of enriched kibble mixed with Minute rice, plus a pint of cooking oil, all of it bubbling and steaming atop an industrial propane stove beside his log cabin in the woods. With their bellies bulging, the dogs watch contentedly as we lash one of Cotter's $1500 birch-and-ash sleds to the roof of the Benz. I let Cotter drive the final 300 miles into Anchorage for the start of the Iditarod. As we pass glorious Mt. McKinley, he says, "You know that saying, 'We're just living between the ground and God'?"

"Or, in my case," I tell him, "between the ground and a fashionable leather-laden interior with burled-walnut inserts and an excellent CD player." But, in truth, I am gratified to have used the Benz as a real SUV-am pleased that it happily accommodated me as a hotel and as a restaurant, that I had made full use of its considerable four-wheel-drive grip, that its mechanical innards stoically withstood 5500 miles of continuous sub-Arctic temperatures, that it had, in short, enabled the sort of solo adventure so gratuitously advertised in daredevil sport-ute commercials but which more commonly manifest only in the travel aisle at Barnes & Noble.

And in the midst of these ethereal, contemplative ruminations, just before I planned to inform Cotter how fine it was finally to possess a congenial traveling companion of high moral character, I spotted a bumper sticker that read: "Don't honk or I'll flip a booger on your windshield."